It was great to see so many people at my seminar at Online Information 2008 in London today - people even stood to endure me, so thanks for that! I spoke about how you can revolutionise your marketing with social media (and how the term revolution is over-used at the moment!) Giving examples of people who are doing it well and a five-point plan for any brand to implement. You'll have to catch me somewhere else to enjoy my slides in glorious technicolour, but for those who couldn't make it, I thought I'd write a little about what I was talking about.
At most marketing conferences I've been to over the last couple of years (and probably for longer back than that) it seems everybody is talking about two things:
- That people are talking about your brand right now.
- That social media has revolutionised marketing.
The former is true. And it always has been. The latter isn't really true yet.
Whilst there are many examples of people doing really great things in social media (from the Fisk-A-Teers, to MyStarbucksIdea and even our own online communities for brands from Butlins to Vitabiotics), these are currently more the exception than the rule. There is a lot of other great stuff going on in social media, and some really innovative marketing, but it is not really a revolution. That would see a shift-change in the way we approach marketing. Whilst it may be great, a lot of what's going on is doing old things in new ways rather than doing really new things.
One of the core parts of social media is about the shift from the one-to-one (or one-to-many) publishing model to a model where the community of people online add to and grow content. Some might add a photo, another geo-tag it, another post it to a group in Flickr...and so on. A lot of what seems to be talked about at marketing conferences is using social media to do things in the old way. We need more of the new way - and this means working with the communities online, be they ones that exist already or building your own online community.
Only when this type of engagement marketing is the norm will we really have a revolution.
Some more reading
- Social capital and building a quality social graph
- Marketing Webinar Shares 5 Ways Brand Relationships Must Evolve Through Social Media During the Recession
- FreshNetworks social media diary 31/10/2008 - Amex
- Three approaches for social media marketing
- What Does The Agency Of The Future Look Like To You?
- Social Media Rules of Engagement
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